Satellite News

Nera SatCom has signed a contract with Telenor Satellite Services for the upgrade of Telenor’s aeronautical satellite Ground Earth Stations at Eik, Norway and Santa Paula, California in the United States.

ESA’s SMART-1 spacecraft impacted the Moon’s surface as planned on 3 September 2006, 0542 UTC, ending ESA’s first solar-powered mission to another celestial body and Europe’s first mission to the Moon.

Inmarsat said it had agreed with Asian hand-held voice satellite services operator ACeS International Ltd. to offer hand-held satellite phone services and would launch its third, already built Inmarsat-4 satellite in late 2007.

Last week, the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) aboard NASA’s New Horizons Pluto probe opened its protective cover and took its first image in space, of Messier 7, a star cluster in our Milky Way galaxy.

SinoSat 2 (a.k.a. Xinnuo 2), China’s first large telecommunications satellite with an anti-jamming system, will be launched by a Chang Zheng 3B spacecraft from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center at the end of October, Chinese media reported.

Alcatel Alenia Space has been granted a satellite contract for the next step of the German Armed Forces’ satellite communications programme Satcom BW Stufe 2 by EADS Astrium, the space segment prime contractor. The contract calls for the design, the manufacturing and the integration of two military satellites.

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has begun the final and fastest-paced portion of its “aerobraking” process of using friction with the top of Mars’ atmosphere to shrink the spacecraft’s orbit. Meanwhile, the satellite has developed problems with a waveguide transfer switch.

South Korea’s recently launched Arirang 2 multipurpose satellite has sent its first photograph, proving that it is working properly to monitor any signs of geographical changes on the Korean Peninsula, government officials said.